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Monthly Archives: November 2014

Best Friends Forever

Spark Profit’s goal is to find the world’s best trading talent. Of course, we hope that you are that rare individual, but if not… it might just be your friend! And that’s still really great news for you.

That’s because we also pay you 10% of everything all your friends earn. This isn’t actually anything new – we used to do it for their first year in the app. Now though, we pay you forever. And it all still comes out of our own pocket. Win-win-win!

Supporters – The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Good things are worth repeating: simply invite as many people as you like, and receive 10% of whatever they earn in the app for life – there is no time limit.

It’s easy to invite your friends to earn more.

Forgotten your invite link? Just go to the Social page on Spark Profit and open the Invite Friends tab by clicking on the icon in the upper right hand corner. Post it to Facebook or share it by email, you’ll get the credit.

“I learned how to play poker at a very young age. My father taught me the concept of playing the percentage hands. You don’t just play every hand and stay through every card, because if you do, you will have a much higher probability of losing. You should play the good hands, and drop out of the poor hands, forfeiting the ante. When more of the cards are on the table and you have a very strong hand – in other words, when you feel the percentages are skewed in your favour – you raise and play the hand to the hilt.” – Gary Bielfeldt, Market Wizards

Like your hand? Then bet and raise

What is leverage?

In Spark Profit, leverage allows you to risk more points in order to gain more points. Its a bit like raising your bet if you are playing poker and you see those pocket rockets (two aces) staring up at you – its time to jam that pot with money as your expectancy is high that these two cards will earn you money. It does not matter if you win or loose that particular hand, if you see two aces staring up at you, its time to bet and bet hard – over time they will pay out.

Its the same with trading, if you have confidence in your trade, you may choose to put more points at risk in order to maximise the amount you can win in this trade.

The Advantages

First off, there is no margin call in our game – you cannot drop below zero in Spark Profit.

Leverage allows you to express your confidence in your trades and profit from them. You can get in on a prediction on a lower leverage, and if it is going well and you have confidence in your prediction, you can add to your trade by increasing your leverage.

If you like the look of your prediction, you can increase your leverage when you first start the game – you can always reduce your leverage if you need to.

Its a double edged sword. There are some risks..

Leverage has some downsides; it costs more and increases your risk.

So, it pays to be selective – there is no point increasing leverage on every prediction you make. Leveraging up on your prediction means you can lose more.. Much much more.

There is also an increased cost of entry into your prediction when you add leverage – if you are betting three or four times the amount of points, your entry cost is multiplied by the leverage you selected. It does not cost you anything to reduce your leverage at any time, but if you increase your leverage in a prediction, there is a cost.

It is best to wait for those predictions where you have a high level of confidence that you are on the right side of things. To return to the poker analogy, you might choose to play some weak hands when you are at the poker table but you want to creep into the hand and not bet much cash. This is the circumstance where you like your hand, it has an OK chance of winning but may not be the strongest in the game. And so it is with your predictions in Spark Profit, there may be certain times that you like a market for a certain direction, but feel it may be a marginal trade – you might want to keep your leverage low to reflect your confidence in your prediction.

Using leverage in your predictions.

Leverage becomes enabled for all players of Spark Profit once they have completed twenty games.

Simply select the level of leverage you want when you first place or amend a prediction. Leverage goes from one to six – six being the highest leverage level and should be used when you are very confident in your prediction. One is the default level of leverage and is the level you have been using up to now when you have made a prediction.

Leverage – just select the level you want when you make your prediction

You can reduce or increase your leverage at any time by clicking on the right hand side of the chart to amend your trade – the prediction ticket will appear displaying your options to amend leverage.

“If a trade doesn’t look right, you get out and take a small loss; it’s precisely equivalent to forfeiting the ante by dropping out of a poor hand in poker. On the other hand, when the percentages seem to be strongly in your favour, you should be aggressive and really try to leverage the trade similar to the way you raise on the good hands in poker” – Gary Bielfeldt, Market Wizards

Traders will be keeping an eye on the GBPUSD this week with the Bank of England inflation report coming out on Wednesday which may be very dovish putting more pressure on the pound sterling.

USD

Bank holiday (markets could be less liquid) Tues Nov 11

Unemployment Claims Thurs Nov 13

Retail Sales figures Fri Nov 14

Consumer Sentiment Fri Nov 14

GBP

Average Earnings Index Wed Nov 12

BOE Inflation Report and Carney speaking Wed Nov 12

EUR

French and German GDP Fri Nov 14

AUD

National Australia Bank Business Confidence Index Tues Nov 11

EURUSD

1.25 seems to be the line in the sand for the sellers with euro. This supply level held today at the intersection of the descending sentiment line and previous support (now resistance).

Last week, sellers sold the open briefly before buyers stepped in. Mid week, sellers came in again and cracked the lows made at the open before closing back up near some intermediate resistance made during the week.

EURUSD retesting the 1.25

Today, the 1.25 supply zone has been tested and has held for now. The shorts have it for now but if the bulls can get price above the trend line and the 1.25, any late shorts could be punished and squeezed to the supply zone around 1.27

AUDUSD

The yearly lows looks at risk on this pair. The monthly bearish candles are longer in length and more determined compared to the bullish candles and we are back at the lows.

Looking at the longer term chart, it is within the bounds of reason that we could see 0.80 on this instrument sometime in the second quarter of 2015.

0.80 on the cards for middle of next year?

In the short term, 0.8640 is the level to watch. If price can hold above this level, buyers may push this pair to the recent supply zone of 0.8760 and the unfilled opening gap. This might be an area where shorts would consider re-loading.

Short term, 0.8640 is the level to watch

GBPUSD

We are at a significant historical level with this pair and this week could be interesting with the BOE report out on Wednesday. Buyers have defended this level in the past and if sellers manage to break this level with any force, any subsequent retests of this level from below could be an opportunity for shorts to reload.

All eyes will be on 1.5850 this week.

All eyes on the 1.5850 level this week

BITCOIN

Bitcoin is not immune to the dollar buying with the 400 level holding for now and a bearish sentiment line allowing sellers to define their risk.

400 the line in the sand for BTCUSD?

Any commitment in price above 400 and retests of this level may see some buyers trying to reload to squeeze those shorts and punish any short sellers who are late to the game.

If price remains below the sentiment line, the bears have the ball with Bitcoin for now.

To find out what the crowd thinks of these markets – just click on the sentiment icon on the chart in Spark Profit to get the opinion of over 100000 players from around the world.